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Germany's road infrastructure grew over centuries to become the arteries and lifelines of our society. The present safety of the infrastructure has to be ensured under consideration of environmental aspects. At the same time the owner has to make sure that the maintenance activities are carried out in the most efficient way. Considering the fact that financial resources are restricted, maintenance costs have to be spent in a way to obtain the greatest possible benefit. In the case of bridges, which are one of the most important parts of the road infrastructure in Germany, this task is supported by the application of a bridge management system (BMS). The existing German BMS contains assessment and optimization procedures on object and network level and is the basis for advancements to meet future demands. Developments concern life cycle and quality-oriented, holistically optimized procedures. Reasonable infrastructure management will contribute to meeting efficiency and sustainability objectives and to achieving interoperability. Here holistic network infrastructure management methods are required. There is a strong need for management solutions during the whole service life of a structure. The definition of criteria for evaluation of the relevance of failure mechanisms, including acceptance thresholds, requires the availability of relevant data for management procedure. Tools for innovative investigation methods and an effective data management will help in meeting the requirements. Relevant fields of research are improved maintenance strategies to meet future demands concerning heavy goods traffic, application and further development of nondestructive testing methods for efficient and sustainable management structures, and the improvement of analytic management tools to meet future demands.
Road transport networks are of major importance for the economy and equally for the mobility of the citizens in the European countries. In order to improve the protection of transport infrastructures and the robustness of the European road network research projects are currently in process on national and European level. A main focus of these investigations is to analyze the specific vulnerabilities of bridges and tunnels concerning structural, operational and organizational aspects and to identify critical objects. But also infrastructures, which are critical due to their location and function in a road network, must be identified. For this the resulting regional and supra-regional impacts due to the failure of certain infrastructures have to be investigated on network level. In order to increase the security of road transport infrastructures and whole road networks the most effective security measures have to be determined. This paper gives an overview about the content and first results of current European and German research projects on road transport security.